What is using the most internet bandwidth? Streaming audio and video

09.12.2015 10:30

According to sandvine, over 70% of all North American internet traffic is being taken up by streaming audio and video. And as you can guess, most of that is probably video. And alot of that is being delivered by services such as Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Video and Hulu. See the press release below for more details.

by Emma S. Shapiro, Associate Editor

Sandvine: Over 70% Of North American Traffic Is Now Streaming Video And Audio

Waterloo, ON; December 7, 2015 – Sandvine, (TSX:SVC) a leading provider of intelligent broadband network solutions for fixed and mobile operators, today released its latest Global Internet Phenomena Report focusing on Africa, the Middle East, and North America. The report is based on data from a selection of Sandvine’s 250-plus communications service provider (CSP) customers.

Real-Time Entertainment (streaming video and audio) traffic now accounts for over 70% of North American downstream traffic in the peak evening hours on fixed access networks. Five years ago it accounted for less than 35%

Netflix (37.1%), YouTube (17.9%), and Amazon Video (3.1%), the top three sources of video traffic on fixed access networks in North America, all saw an increase in traffic share over the levels observed earlier in the year

With the growth of video, BitTorrent share continues to see a decline in fixed access bandwidth share, and now accounts for only 5% of total traffic in North America. Last year during the same period it accounted for over 7%

On mobile networks in the Middle East, Instagram is responsible for over 10% of total traffic. Combining Instagram with traffic from WhatsApp and Facebook, reveals that Facebook controls almost 25% of mobile traffic in the region

WhatsApp, driven by the recent addition of voice calling, now accounts for more than 10% of downstream mobile traffic in Africa

The release of Windows 10 in July did not break the Internet as some predicted. Microsoft’s decision to deploy the update in waves, during off-peak hours resulted in the release having minimal impact on networks around the globe

“Streaming Video has grown at such a rapid pace in North America that the leading service in 2015, Netflix, now has a greater share of traffic than all of streaming audio and video did five years ago,” said Dave Caputo, CEO, Sandvine. “With Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Video, and Hulu increasing their share since our last report, it further underscores both the growing role these streaming services play in the lives of subscribers, and the need for service providers to have solutions to help deliver a quality experience when using them.”

Check out Sandvine’s Internet Phenomena blog on a regular basis for the latest trends, predictions and phenomena impacting Internet usage around the world.

GLOBAL INTERNET PHENOMENA REPORT METHODOLOGY

Sandvine’s Global Internet Phenomena Reports are based on a representative cross-section of Sandvine’s data from a selection of Sandvine’s 250-plus customers spanning North America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Caribbean and Latin Americ,a and Asia-Pacific. Data is gathered over a one-month period and is completely subscriber-anonymous. No identifiable information of any kind, including IP addresses are collected during the study. Sandvine’s network equipment analyzes data from an application utilization level and is not content aware.

ABOUT SANDVINE

Sandvine’s network policy control solutions add intelligence to fixed, mobile and converged communications service provider networks to enable services that can increase revenue and reduce network costs. Powered by Sandvine’s Policy Engine and SandScript policy language, Sandvine’s networking equipment performs end-to-end policy control functions including traffic classification, and policy decision and enforcement across the data, control and business planes. Sandvine’s products provide actionable business insight, the ability to deploy new subscriber services and tools to optimize traffic while enhancing subscriber Internet quality of experience.

Sandvine’s network policy control solutions are deployed in more than 250 networks in over 90 countries, serving hundreds of millions of data subscribers worldwide, www.sandvine.com.

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